How Hollywood portrays Africa, and how Africa portrays itself

I went to see The Last King of Scotland last night, as it's just opened in Nairobi after its Africa premiere in Kampala last week. It's very good – very frightening and very funny at the same time, I guess a little like Mr Amin himself. Forest Whitaker thoroughly deserves his gong.

Forest Whitaker in his Oscar-winning role

It seems Africa is all the rage on the silver screen at the moment, but I wonder what impression the wider world is forming about the place from what they are watching down the flicks?

In quick order, we had the latest Bond, Casino Royale, whose trademark opening sequence swept over a scary-looking Ugandan rebel camp. As my colleague David Blair posted here in December, this was fictionally and erroneously located in the entirely peaceful eastern Ugandan town of Mbale. Why bother?

Then came Blood Diamond. True, it is an excellent portrayal of the horrors of Sierra Leone's 1990s civil war. But many people I spoke to in the country fear the outside world will think that this is how their nation is today, when it definitely is not.

And now, The Last King of Scotland. Again, a riveting historical narrative, but rooted, one hopes, in a Uganda of the past. How many people, sitting in cinemas from Altrincham to Watford, will not think that such horrors are simply the daily business of Africa?

Hollywood seems to see the continent in only one of two ways. You have the sweeping and epic scenery dotted with wildlife and gin-drinking expats, as depicted in films like Out of Africa, White Mischief or, most recently, The White Masai.

Now, it seems, directors' attention has focused on blood-letting rebels, senseless civil wars, despotic leaders and Western exploitation (The Constant Gardener perhaps the only film to show Africa or Kenya as I see it day to day).

Both of these two facets are, of course, not wrong, but they do give a narrow, depressing and short-hand view. And they do so from the experience of the 'white man in Africa', rather than through the eyes of people living here.

But it is interesting to look at how Africa presents itself on screen. The 20th biennial Pan-African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (Fespaco) opened at the weekend in Burkina Faso. More than 200 films will be shown.

There are films, like It's Going to Rain on Conakry, showing religious soul-searching, government corruption and political manipulation. In another, Early One Morning, which is based on a true story, two Guinean boys desperate to flee their country stow away in the undercarriage of a jet heading for Europe.

Then there is the wonderfully tongue-in-cheek Africa Paradis, set way in the future when Africa or The United States of Africa has boomed and poor European immigrants are fighting to slip into the continent illegally.

Few of these plots sound particularly uplifting, perhaps, but they do ring true as presentations of daily African life in 2007. Hollywood would do well to take note if it is to continue its flirtation with Africa, and I hope it does.Â